Tag Archives: tofu

So , it drives me up a wall, but I constantly get people asking me what i do for protein. Are they serious? I get so much protein i think my kidneys are mad at me. Let me just set the record straight real quick.

First of all…beans! Yes, they are the magical fruit that make you go toot but they are also packed with protein. If you take enough Beano, you don’t have to worry about gas. Or bloating. Or that weird meowing noise your stomach does when garbanzos decides to tear it a new one.

Second…pasta! If you look at those new-agey type pastas they all say “excellent source of protein” and upon further digging, i have found out that apparently whatever your age is, you multiply it by two and there you have how much protein you should be taking in per day. If there are any nutritionists out there who’d like to do battle over this stat- bring it. I’m unarmed. That’s just something I pulled from the net. You would totally win.

Let’s not forget my favorite protein alternative- tempeh. This monster has 19 grams of protein in one four ounce serving. Wow. Tofu, while not the best of them, is still holding steady at about 4.5 grams per ounce. Let’s not forget soy milk, please. I ingest tons of it because I freaking love granola (yes, honey free, my darlings) and one cup of it has 7 grams.

And let’s go there please. Soy milk. It was never my favorite back in the day, but this ugly duckling has really sprouted beautiful feathers recently. I don’t know what they’re doing to the stuff, but it tastes so much better these days. And calcium? It has 30% of what i need in that little cup.

I’m not going to go through and list all the things i eat in a day that have protein and calcium so a clan of carnivores can still find something wrong with the vegan philosophy. Either you feel it or you don’t, and I do. So nyah! Bring on the food!!

This was my lunch yesterday and today. I boiled the aforementioned pasta while sauteeing some cherry tomatoes. I pushed down on the tomatoes to get them to squirt out a bit of juice and then tossed in a lot of zucchini and yellow squash. When it was pretty well caramelized, I tossed in the cannellini beans, a handful of dried parsley, a handful of dried oregano, a crapload of chopped garlic, and some crushed red pepper because I like my shit hot. Oh, and of course, kosher salt ad pepper. This was quite delicious and I’m going to pat myself on the back for this one.

I’m not going to pat myself on the back for this one, however. I sucked hard at making this recipe that I know would have been fabulous if I’d had over a couple of Yentas, but I don’t know any. It’s the Matzo Ball Soup from Vegan With A Vengeance by Isa Chandra. It started out great- I got the mix together and I refrigerated it overnight, as suggested.

I took it out and made my Matzo balls. I was so excited I almost started speaking in tongues, Yiddish being one of them. I had my water boiling and I carefully placed them inside the pot. I put the lid on and left it alone like she says to in the book. I mean, she used all caps to drive home the point, so i figured I’d better do it or I may get some kind of bad Kabbalic Karma sent my way. Then this happened.

It boiled over. So i had to remove the lid. I was looking over my shoulder the whole time, I swear. What a bummer because I’m sure that had something to do with what happened to my balls. Ahem, Matzo balls.

They looked nice in the pot but when my 40 minutes were up and i went to remove them, well, there was a lot of Matzo meal floating about the pot and a good portion of the balls were falling apart. Very sad, really. I was so looking forward to trying this stuff. This is the finished product. I managed to find few good balls and i ladled the broth over them. It was still heavenly, I’m not going to lie, but until I perfect this soup, I’m not serving it at my next Passover Seder.